Affairs of Darkness

Crickets chirp and ponies sleep, late one night outside of the small town of Ponyville. Grey clouds cover the skies, blocking out the light of the stars and moon as a light rain falls. Just outside the small town, at the border of the forest sits a hastily established camp. Ponies in dark blue armor run between the black tents mindless of the rain. Inside the largest of these tents, behind a curtain door emblazoned with a crescent moon, an older dark grey unicorn in worn silver armor matching his faded mane paces back and forth. Reading aloud from a stack of paper floating in front of him to a group of five gathered in the tent with him. Images displayed in a floating square against the wall beside him as he speaks.

“Case UO 03-1650-54: ‘Ponyville Disappearances’ and Case UE 03-1650-12: ‘Mysterious Masked Mare’”

He reads aloud from the papers before him, not looking up as her turns and paces back. The screen changing to show a red building, obviously a small town schoolhouse.

“1st Incident. Location: Ponyville Schoolhouse, Ponyville. Time: Mid Afternoon. A filly by the name of Dinky Hooves disappeared from the class of one Ms Cheerilee during lunch hour.“

The screen shifts to show a small purple unicorn filly with a yellow mane.

“Sources say she’s ‘an adorable little muffin’.........”

He stops for a moment to flip through more of the papers, tossing some aside as he does.

“Ah! Here we go. More relevant to the issue as hoof: she was reported to be staring out towards the forest frequently and holding conversations with seemingly nopony shortly before her disappearance. The 2nd incident came soon after when her mother, one Ms Derpy Hooves, flew out to find her and disappeared without a trace herself.”

The screen shifts to show a grey Pegasus mare with a yellow mane and eyes who seem to be looking in two separate directions apparently hiding a muffin behind her back from a yellow and orange mare.

“It wasn’t long after this that the first sighting of the Mysterious Masked Mare was made.”

The image shifts one more time to a somewhat poor quality image. However, easily visible in the image is a faraway figure, its red and yellow coloration standing out vividly against the green of the trees behind it. Seemingly floating in midair on the outskirts of town.

“The Mysterious Masked Mare, hereafter referred to as UE-M in this report, has since been sighted repeatedly on the outskirts of Ponyville. Always floating, though as far as anypony can tell she either lacks wings or doesn’t use them, and always watching. Every time she’s been sighted, another disappearance has been reported within the hour. Over the past month we’d had more than fifty disappearances including a squad of royal guards sent to apprehend UE-M who never reported back in. At this rate, the entire population of Ponyville will have disappeared before the next Running of the Leaves!”

The screen shifts again to an image of the ‘You are now entering Ponyville’ sign, with the population number painted over with a big red 0. The unicorn stops pacing, setting the papers down on a desk and turning to face the five gathered before him.

“And Her Majesty Princess Luna has seen fit to dispatch the Affairs of Darkness to ascertain, and if possible, resolve the situation. That’s you lot. The Night Guard has also been dispatched to assist you in any way possible. That’s us, and that’s the situation thus far. Once the scheduled rain has let up we’ll begin the expedition into the Everfree Forest in search of UE-M! Any questions?”

The unicorn looks around the group before him, as the screen shifts one last time. This time it shows Princess Luna wearing a big blue top hat with stars all over it pointing a hoof at the screen with a determined expression. The words “We want THOU to get things done!” captioned in big bold letters at the bottom.

Silky remains mostly silent through the explanation, writing in her logbook taking up most of her attention, glancing only briefly at two dials strapped securely to her right foreleg.

Juniper 14, 2018: Case UO 03-1650-54 Assigned - Locate and Apprehend UE-M 'Mysterious Masked Mare'. Believed responsible for case UO 03-1650-54 'Disappearances in Ponyville'. Relevant details - UE-M colour scheme Red/Yellow, floats without obvious wings. Disappearances within 1hr of reported sighting. 50+ disappearances to date, inc. one band of Royal Guards.

The seapony doesn't even look up as the stallion asks after questions. "Name and Rank. Where the disappearances have been recorded." The voice was high and musical, with a slightly moist quality, like a hoof running along the rim of a half-empty wine glass. She affords a moment away from the book clutched tightly against her pastern to look at the others in the room.

"The team for tonight."

Spoiler:

Paper Reign sits silently through the whole thing and nods as the seapony asks for information. At the last, in a small dim flash of light, one of these:

appears on its chest and anypony who is looking can see the words Paper Reign being written in as if by an invisible hoof.

The dragonnel in the room looked over at the others, nodding to Paper in recognition of his name before speaking, her tone having an almost sing-song quality to it, "My name is Scarlet Flare, but I do have a question." She raised one forelimb, thinking. "You said we were after the masked mare, yes? Are we writing off the civilians, or are we simply hoping she'll cough up their location?" The idea of leaving the civilians out to dry didn't sit too well with her, though she could understand the priorities.

The Unicorn was also quiet as he was briffed on this mission he had somehow gotten himself roped into...

"Shock Therapy..." Said the medical dressed pony with his odd looking mechanical sattlebags. "I as well am wondering what are the running theories on who or what this "Masked Mare" is at the moment."

The... small fuzzy thing... looks up "Chris, charmed I'm sure. And anyway, how are we supposed to find this UE-M?" It almost purrs.

Now that's an odd name... Fitting for such an odd creature... Shock thinks to himself. Mmmm.. Would love to get look over it's biology. I wonder if there are any veterinary or medical charts on this Chris?

"Silky Wake. Stealth. Amphibious Operations." finishes Silky, cracking a wry smile when a handsome black tom leaps up from seemingly nowhere and stands on the back of the Chris' seat. He meows inquisitively, as Silky adds "...Cat Herding." If it were ever possible to hear a cat snort derisively, he'd just done it.

"That's Connery. He wants to know what you are."

Spoiler:

Chris sighs, "I am an adaptive being, my specialties are infiltration and public relations. I'm here to reduce the negative impact of any... hot water you may find yourself in." It pauses, then adds, "Don't worry, I don't bite."

"Well, I'm called a Dragonnel..." Scarlet started, thinking a moment. "I'm decent enough at infiltrating, but my talents are in neutralization and...Making distractions." To illustrate her point, she snorted, a small amount of smoke escaping.

"I'm good with healing, both combat heavy healing thanks to my little medigun..." He motions to his right saddlebag and a hose of some kind magically extends out, to show before he has it return to where it came from. "And more complex work... Also I have a good deal of special weather culutles that I can use to change the weather nearly as fast as a team of weather ponies could..."

Paper Reign says nothing but turns to the others to give them a view of the sticker on its chest, then holds out its hooves where a small stack of folders appear.

---

Arcana to summon a dossier on each of the others: 16 + 15 = 31

“Err, Stalwart Shield. Lieutenant. Most of the disappearances have been in areas bordering the Everfree Forest. Though some have been further in, such as a few cases from the local hospital.”

He answers somewhat awkwardly after taking a moment to collect his thoughts.

“The Princess has deemed the timing of the Masked Mares appearances compared to the disappearances of the townsfolk as too consistent to be mere coincidence. With no other leads as to what is happening, capturing this Masked Mare and ascertaining what her involvement is in this is our best bet so far to finding them. We don’t really have any theories, can’t see anything about her through the leaves and mask. Not even a glimpse of coat or mane. We only even know it’s a mare because one eye witness heard her giggling to herself.”

He looks between Scarlet and Shock in turn as he addresses their questions next, nodding slightly to himself as if going over the details in his own mind as he says them. A flare from his horn lifts the stack of papers back over to him. Quickly shuffling through the pages for something before seemingly finding it and clearing his throat.

“According to a preliminary magical scan of the area where the disappearances supposedly occurred and where the Masked Mare were sighted, they both seem to have a small, 10% or so, matching residual magic signature. We’ll be moving in a standard search grid pattern with unicorns trained in magical detection looking to pick up the trail of that same signature and hope it leads us where we want to go. Wah...? HEY!”

He drops most of the papers as a large chunk of them seemingly disappear from the pile, and rematerialize in neat stacks in front of Paper Reign.

papers:

Paper Reign looks through the papers, taking effort to memorize their contents. Even the ones on itself.

"Oh... Interesting skills that, our mute "friend" has it seems..." Shock chuckles. "Also I guess that's good enough info to work with for the moment."

"Good. I will review the dossiers then wait outside until we are ready to move."

Silky waits until Paper is done attempting to memorise the dossiers, before taking them and jotting down a number of notes on the others in her logbook. Afterwards, she turns to the tom, peering over her shoulder at the dossiers.

"Let's go then, Connery, we're missing a nice spring rain." *mrowr* "Of course I brought your raincoat! It's the yellow one - I couldn't find your black one." *mrowr* "Ah. I'll have to get it back from him later."

Moments later, Silky steps outside to enjoy the rain, a yellow oilskin suited cat riding on her back with uncharacteristic calm.

"Yeah, I suppose you wouldn't need us if you knew more about what was going on...That's enough for me..." She glanced at Paper for a moment, seeming a bit surprised, but chuckling. "You're certainly talented, that'll be useful to have on our side." For now, though, there was little to do but to wait for the rain to clear up...Even if she personally had no problem with heading out now.

Shuffling through the dossiers, Chris says "Wow, these papers really don't do me justice... I mean seriously, they make me seem conniving..."

As Chris is looking at the papers, Paper Reign trots up and points at the part on Chris' dossier where it mentions a water adaptive form.

Chris looks at Paper Reign, "Oh, you want to see that one?" It then concentrates and shifts into a sleek, blue-green scaled form. It's still really cute.

Paper Reign walks around Chris and examines the new form for a few moments before it's paper suit shifts and color seems to bleed in and in a moment it looks identical to Chris' new form. It nods and then walks outside.

"Two shapeshifters? Okay, that's...Well, if it turns out you can do it too, I'm going to really start feeling like the odd mare out." Scarlet looked at Shock, chuckling for a moment before looking to Chris, nodding. "Impressive feat...What you see is pretty much what you get where I'm concerned...Ah well. Any other tricks like that you feel like demonstrating while we wait for the weather to improve?" She looked at the dossiers, attempting to levitate them over to take a look as she waited...

"I do assure you, I do not shapeshift..." Shock replies.

Chris chuckles, "Actually, what you see is always what you get with me. In a manner of speaking." Then saunters out into the rain.

Silky turns around and does a double take when she notices twice as many weird hairball things as there were a second ago. She frowns and regards each of them in turn, trying to figure out which one was the real 'Chris'. She then frowns, and leans in closer - a little too close for comfort, even - as she buries her nose in the scales of each of the two 'Chris'-es, inhaling deeply to try and pick out their scent in the rain. It worked as well in water as it did in air, but admittedly it wasn't nearly as easy when there was an intersection of the two environs.

"Holds up to visual inspection. Smell very subtly different. Not obvious which one is real Chris. Might be possible once I know you better. Definitely impressed." she says, finally stepping away and nodding with approval. "Not afraid of catching your death of cold?"

Spoiler: